first race was somehow slightly boring even though there was quite a bit of passing. pleased raikkonen won though. mclaren look extra-useless. and for british bbc viewers, suzi perry was less annoying than i was expecting.

my parents used to watch f1 when it was on itv whilst listening to the 5live radio commentary because they hated james allen. it did mean occasional cricket update interruptions as well as the adverts. crazy system.

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The very notion of putting it on a channel which was going to interrupt it with adverts was completely bonkers.

Anyway, this was an underwhelming start to the season. Quite a boring race.

Mercedes look to have immediately slipped back into the story of last season, tidy qualifying with no race pace. I think this will be a tough season for Lewis.

Love Kimi though, especially that fact that he can barely even crack a smile when he takes the first race of the season, in style. He is the consummate professional. "Leave me alone, I know what i'm doing!!" That was the highlight of the season last year

first race was somehow slightly boring even though there was quite a bit of passing. pleased raikkonen won though. mclaren look extra-useless. and for british bbc viewers, suzi perry was less annoying than i was expecting.

Anyway, this was an underwhelming start to the season. Quite a boring race.

Mercedes look to have immediately slipped back into the story of last season, tidy qualifying with no race pace. I think this will be a tough season for Lewis.

Love Kimi though, especially that fact that he can barely even crack a smile when he takes the first race of the season, in style. He is the consummate professional. "Leave me alone, I know what i'm doing!!" That was the highlight of the season last year

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Agreed with all the above.

It wasn't a classic race, but I'm glad Kimi won, and it certainly sets up a great dynamic for the season. I've a feeling it's going to be a good one.

I watched that documentary about Susie Wolff last night, made by her brother. Including the the weird German inflection she's picked up from her husband, it was fascinating. When she was driving DTM, the team put her in a pink car and even her team mates were slagged about being passed by her, while she was standing there listening to them. That is one cool customer. Her only comment about the pink car was "it wasn't the way I would have gone".

what no vettel-hate from gecko yet? i suppose you can't accuse him of being spoilt and only able to win from the front anymore if he ignores team orders and makes a hell of a crazy pass for the lead.

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A crazy SURPRISE (okay that's not a good excuse for people with quick reactions like racing drivers, but Webber had been told repeatedly that he would not be challenged by Vettel and they had been told before the race to drive in formation after the final stop) pass against someone with their engine turned right down. Yeah, what a real racer...

Not only does he weave around at the end as if he's happy about winning, but he lies through his teeth about doing anything at all when he's on the podium, and then changes his mind about it in the press conference and pretends to apologise (most likely because he had read some of the things the interwebs media were posting about him). No balls whatsoever (otherwise he would have at least admitted what he was trying to do instead of bullshitting about it multiple times to various different tunes).

You can't have F1 without team orders, and you can't have it with them. There are problems with both scenarios. The only way to stop them would be for each team to only have one driver, but the amount they'd save in some running costs would be more than cancelled out by lower visibility on track and therefore probably sponsorship. It might lower the entry cost to F1 (to both new teams & new sponsors), but it's not the direction F1 wants to go and in any case wouldn't benefit the current teams so they'd all be strongly against it.

Having said all that, Vettel was clearly in the wrong. There isn't an obvious remedy though. A fine is irrelevant to him, he didn't break an F1 rule so can't be docked points, and if Red Bull were to make him miss a race, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

This sort of thing will always happen occasionally when a team chooses not to have a clear #1 and #2 driver. We've seen it in previous seasons with Red Bull, McLaren and others. Ferrari like to have a clear 1 & 2 (Schumy in his day, for example, and now Alonso) and I suspect that internally Mercedes have made a similar choice with Hamilton & Rosberg given what happened there and Nico backing down. The problem with clear 1/2 drivers is that you know they'll always try switch places towards the end of the race if they're out of order, which spoils the fun. But it prevents the problem of pretending both drivers are treated equally, when clearly they aren't. Webber knows, deep down, that he's Red Bull's number 2 driver despite any team prostestations to the contrary and in fact, it's the team's official pretense to the contrary that really created the bad feelings.

Vettel still shouldn't have done what he did, but ruthlessness is probably part of the world champion job description. The bad feelings generated probably weren't worth the extra points though, in the long term, esp. as he's likely to need Webber's help at some point during the season and I doubt he'll get any now.

^That could be one of the pit falls of screwing over your team mate, when you've been told to hold station. If you need them later in the season to keep a title rival behind them, it would be very easy for them to go to wide on a corner and let your rival through. Webber doesn't appear to be a driver that would do that however.

As for Mercedes, yes Nico was faster than Lewis but he played the team game, it is better for the team at this stage in the Championship to pick up as many points as they can and not risk taking each other off. Remember a few years ago when the Red bulls collided with each other and most people say Vettel was to blame for the accident at times it seemed as if we could be seeing a repeat of this when Vettel was trying to get past Webber,

^That could be one of the pit falls of screwing over your team mate, when you've been told to hold station. If you need them later in the season to keep a title rival behind them, it would be very easy for them to go to wide on a corner and let your rival through. Webber doesn't appear to be a driver that would do that however.

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I don't know; he looked more distraught than I've seen him before, so he may finally have snapped in that regard. In any event, it's probably been a blessing that they've had a few weeks between races to let everything cool down a bit.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out in China this weekend.